My Erotic Double

By John Ashbery b. 1927 John Ashbery

He says he doesn’t feel like working today.

It’s just as well. Here in the shade

Behind the house, protected from street noises,

One can go over all kinds of old feeling,

Throw some away, keep others.

The wordplay

Between us gets very intense when there are

Fewer feelings around to confuse things.

Another go-round? No, but the last things

You always find to say are charming, and rescue me

Before the night does. We are afloat

On our dreams as on a barge made of ice,

Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight

That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams

As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it.

I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.

Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.

Thank you. You are too.

John Ashbery, “My Erotic Double” from As We Know. Copyright © 1979 by John Ashbery. Reprinted with the permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the author.

Source: As We Know (Viking Press, 1979)

Biography

John Ashbery is recognized as one of the greatest twentieth-century American poets. He has won nearly every major American award for poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Griffin International Award, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Ashbery's poetry challenges its readers to discard all presumptions about the aims, themes, . . .

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